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"Grounded"Written By: ExecutiveShrimp Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it belongs
to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. Written for pleasure not
profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: unbeta'd, sexual, violent content (graphic,
at times). Pairings: 2x1 Summary: A Preventer mission goes horribly wrong. Co-captains Duo and Heero both survive, but as changed men, and they have to rebuild their lives from the ground up.
"Grounded"
Part IX – Heero's POV "I want to go home! I want to go home right now!" The staff had argued with him, reciting all the reasons why it was a bad idea for him to leave the hospital, but he couldn't stand to stay in that room any longer and he kept screaming at them: "I want to go home!" He had been thrashing in the bed, so angry at everything that his body couldn't contain the energy. He made big, wild gestures with his arms and his attempt to kick the sheets away just resulted in him jostling his useless legs around. The two nurses – Floramaria and a male nurse he didn't know – put their hands on him to restrain him, while doctor Faulkner didn't give up on trying to convince him to stay. When the male nurse placed his hand against Heero's chest and tried to push him back down against the mountain of pillows that had supported him, Heero snapped. He had twisted his fist into the man's scrubs and yanked his face close to his to scare him with his deadly glare, before throwing him back. Being bedridden for weeks, going into months, had left him weakened, but he still found some strength in his limbs. The nurse hit his head when he fell backwards; the wound bled profusely. After the incident, his desire to be discharged was met with no resistance. It had been the last straw. He had been categorized as 'difficult' and 'unmanageable' before. Now that he was considered violent, none of the nurses wanted to be responsible for his care. Even Rhiannon had relented with a sigh. He was brought a wheelchair and clothes. It took him over forty-minutes to get dressed and literally drag himself out of bed and into the seat of the wheelchair. He resented the thing instantly, but it was a means to an end. In spite of his exercises – all day, every day – the legs were still not responding. Sally had flown in twice to check on the implant and the receiver in the legs and found nothing to be wrong with the equipment and all she could prescribe was patience. More patience. Duo hadn't been to the hospital since before Heero had had his embarrassing tumble out of the bed, after which he had wet himself on the floor like a helpless child. He didn't know why his partner had stopped coming in to see him. He couldn't wait any longer for Duo to show up, he had to go see him. He had to go home. He didn't realize his mistake until the car service stopped in front of his old apartment building. As far as the Preventer agency was aware, his "home" was the apartment he had been renting since he first joined the agency. He had kept the lease to keep up pretenses, so no one would suspect his sexual involvement with his co-Captain. Before he could find a way to rephrase what he meant when he had said that he wanted to go "home", the driver had already gotten out of the vehicle and had fetched the wheelchair from the trunk. He opened the car door for Heero and then stepped back, since it had been made clear to him that Heero would accept no one's assistance. Heero stared at the wheelchair and at the front door of the apartment building. His apartment, unlike the house he had shared with Duo, was quite wheelchair friendly. The elevator could take him up to the modest apartment, where everything – his bedroom and his bathroom – were accessible to him. At the house, he'd be faced with stairs that he couldn't climb. The only way for him to get around the house was to be carried around by his partner, but Heero was not going to submit to such humiliation. He had suffered enough of that. So, in spite of his need to see Duo's face again, hear his voice again and feel his touch again, Heero unfastened his seatbelt and scooted to the edge of his seat. With one hand he grabbed the frame of the door and with the other he gripped the edge of the roof of the car. Thankfully, his upper body was still strong enough to hoist himself into the awaiting wheelchair, even with the dead weight of his legs. He grabbed the cold ankles and positioned his feet on the footrests. "You got this?" The driver asked. Heero didn't answer him – didn't even look at him – as he rolled himself to the front door, which opened automatically. The keycard to access the elevator and open the door of his apartment were at the house, stuffed away in a drawer. Thankfully, the building manager still recognized him and gave him a copy. The man was too intimidated to ask about why he was back and why he was in a wheelchair. The apartment was exactly the way he had left it, if a little stuffy. The door had a mechanism on it so it would fall shut on its own and it was a challenge to hold it open while trying to push his wheelchair inside. The chair got stuck between the door and the doorframe several times before he finally managed to throw the door wide open in frustration and quickly roll over the low threshold before the door fell shut behind him He flicked on the kitchen light and then went to the window to open it. Another thing that proved to be a bit of a hassle from his seated position. After completing the task of getting inside and opening the window, his muscles were already aching. At least his hips and legs didn't hurt anymore. He stared out the window for a moment. He had gotten used to the view through the windows of his hospital room and it was a relief to finally see something different, even if all he could see from the living room window was the outer wall of the colony, since the apartment building was located at the edge. The lights on the colony were dimming; orange and pink hues reflected off the metal walls. He missed earth sometimes, everything was more beautiful on earth. The colonies tried too hard to mimic the conditions on the planet when they ought to embrace what they are; practical and predictable. Therein lay their own beauty. Exhausted after the long day, he gave up on staring out the window and headed for the bedroom. The corridor was narrow and the angle into the bathroom was sharp, but he managed to get inside. He didn't feel up to the task of bathing himself, but he wasn't going to neglect brushing his teeth. He still had a new toothbrush and toothpaste in the box of supplies under the sink. When he had left the apartment, he always thought he would eventually come back, only he never did. Not until then, at least. The sink was high and he couldn't reach the stream of water from the faucet to rinse his mouth, so with a mouth full of frothy spearmint toothpaste he headed to the kitchen to retrieve a glass, only to realize he couldn't reach the top cabinets where he kept the glasses. He tried pulling himself up by the edge of the counter, but his body wasn't as strong as he needed it to be. He searched the lower cabinets and found a bowl that could suit his needs. He stubbed his toe against the doorframe as he maneuvered the wheelchair back into the bathroom, but it didn't matter. Not because he couldn't feel his feet, but because his big toe always hurt, ever since he woke up in that bed. He filled the bowl with water and finally rinsed his mouth. When he reached the bedroom he checked the red LED letters of the alarm and realized that the entire ordeal had taken him half an hour. Brushing his teeth had taken half an hour. The irritation that that caused had him gritting his teeth. Rather than get dressed in nightwear, he just took off his clothes – not as simple as that used to be. He put the brakes on the wheelchair so it wouldn't slip out from under him as it had that afternoon, when he had first tried to climb into the car that had been called for him. He threw his body forward and landed on the mattress and he crawled further onto the bed. Getting under the sheets was another struggle that he wished he could give up on, but he was dressed in only his underwear and it was too cold to sleep on top of the sheets. Once he was in position, he grabbed the little backpack that hung from the left handle on the back of the wheelchair, which contained the medication he had been sent home with. He was still on an elaborate cocktail of pills to aid his recovery and he had been given a week's worth of sleeping pills; after that, he would have to get by falling asleep naturally. He didn't bring the bowl of water, so he swallowed his pills dry and then settled down on his back. First, he stared up at the ceiling, then he stared down his body at his two feet pointing up under the sheets. He tried to move them, as he had tried and failed again and again ever since he first woke up. They wouldn't move. With the help of the pills, he fell asleep swiftly and when he woke up the next morning, the room was bright – too bright - and he could barely open his eyes as the blinding light of the colony reflected off the walls and into his bedroom. One streak of light went directly across the bed and into his face. Getting out of bed was hard. Relieving himself in the bathroom was hard. Washing his hands was hard. Getting something to eat was hard. Navigating around the furniture was hard. Everything was hard. Everything was out of reach. But he soldiered on like he was supposed to. One day he mustered up the strength to pull himself up on the counter to retrieve a couple of glasses and dishes from the upper cabinets. In the living room he pushed the furniture out of the way to make a path for the wheelchair between the kitchen, the bedroom and the bathroom. By the time he went into the bathroom to make it more useable for him, he was already exhausted and he couldn't pull himself up by the sink enough to reach the top shelves where he kept shaving cream and extra bottles of shampoo and shower gel. He used the crutches that had also been given to him, to swipe everything off the top shelves. The products clattered loudly on the tiled floor and one bottle broke open and spilled scented shampoo on the floor. By the time he had finished cleaning up the mess, he was so tired he needed to get himself into bed to rest. Every day, he considered calling Duo, but he always ended up deciding against it, because Duo hadn't called him either. Surely the former Deathscythe pilot must have been made aware that Heero had left the hospital wing of the Preventer bureau, but the man kept ignoring him. That made Heero confused. He had figured Duo had stopped coming to his hospital room because Heero had made it clear he didn't want anyone finding out that the two of them were more involved than they were allowed to be and they would have to be careful if they ever wanted Heero to return to co-Captain their team. But there were no watchful nurses and Preventer-assigned doctors around anymore, so why wouldn't he stop by now, or call? The first week went by at an agonizing pace and then the days only started feeling longer when he ran out of his supply of sleeping pills and he could no longer sleep at night. His strength was improving, but there was nothing he could do with it. There was energy bottled up in his body. The pressure needed a release; he needed to run, but he couldn't. He felt like a bottle of soda that had been shaken up and he was bubbling and fizzing and the top was about to blow off. Lying in bed, restless and wide awake, wasn't comfortable either, since he couldn't move around; he couldn't toss and turn. Whenever he wanted to change his position in bed, he had to sit upright, grab his lower legs and reposition them manually. On the third night without his sleeping pills, he finally got frustrated enough to drag himself out of bed and go through the effort of getting a drink and a breath of fresh air by the living room window – that he hadn't managed to shut after getting it open the very first day. Outside, everything was black. The only thing he could see were the red, flashing lights of an access port in the outer wall. The simulated wind was nice, however. According to the weather schedule, it had been dialed up to the maximum for the night, to help cool the inner atmosphere after a few days of planned heat. The wind tousled his hair and pulled at his loose, thin T-shirt, which was the only thing he was wearing; underwear and pants were a hassle to get on with his stiff, immobile legs and he hadn't felt up to the task after he had gone through the trouble of showering that evening. Showering, nowadays, meant rolling his wheelchair into the shower stall and letting it get soaked by the spray of water just as he was. He couldn't reach the shower head, which was propped up high, so it took some scooting back and forth in the small stall to get the spray of the water aimed at every part of his body to rinse off the suds of the soap and shampoo. He had gotten so much shampoo in his eyes that they were red and irritated by the time that he was done. He smoothed the oversized T-shirt over his thighs, wanting to keep himself covered up, even though no one was around to see him naked and plenty of people had seen him undressed as of late. Being manhandled in the hospital had felt like a violation to him, one that still made his stomach turn. He had no choice but to accept people touching him and it was the fact that it hadn't been his choice – that it had never been a matter of consent – that made his nauseous. He used to be good at following orders and taking his own will, needs and desires out of the equation. That had changed over the past few years; since he had been made team Captain and everyone – including his co-Captain – reinforced his independence. The only time he had ever relinquished control, was when he was in bed with Duo. The man's cool fingers and hot breath on his skin made him come undone. He trusted Duo to know how to make him feel good and he hadn't been disappointed; not even when the man bit him, left bruises and fucked him roughly, almost painfully. The touch of the male nurses had been different. It still made his skin crawl. They were gentle, but persistent, as they touched him everywhere to examine him, dress his wounds, give him shots, bathed him and applied the catheter that he hated more than anything. He never wanted to be that weak again, he never wanted to be put in a situation where being touched by strangers didn't first need his approval. He ran his hand down his thigh until he felt the slight lip of where the synthetic skin of his lower legs connected with his thighs, halfway between his knees and his hips. The skin was soft and warm to the touch, but it got cooler as he let his hand trail further down. His ankles and feet just felt cold. The fine hairs tickled him as he let his fingers ghost over the surface. He closed his eyes and imagined Duo touching him, running his hands up his legs and spreading them, peppering kisses on his calves, that he put over his shoulders and having Heero lock his ankles behind his head. He palmed his crotch through the thin material of the shirt that covered him, but his eyebrows just knitted together in frustration and after a few attempts to get himself hard so he could at least find a release for some of his pent-up energy, he gave up. He hadn't had an erection since before the mission. Sally had assured him that there had been no nerve damage following his brain operation and he trusted her, but the only other alternative meant that his body's unresponsiveness was psychological and that worried him more than anything. His phone was on the side table next to the couch, directly to his right and he had only looked at it to check the time displayed on the screen, but without conscious thought he had taken it into his hand and had dialed the number he knew by heart. It was the number of his home, after all. His thumb hovered over the green call button. It was late, so he shouldn't call. He didn't really know what to say, so he shouldn't call. And Duo hadn't called him either, so he shouldn't call. He pressed the green button anyway and held the phone to his ear. Every time it rang, he considered hanging up, but he didn't, not even as the phone rang twelve, thirteen, then fourteen times. "… Heero?" Duo's voice was hoarse, but it was a pleasure to hear nonetheless. The way it made him feel completely caught him off guard and he replied dumbly: "Hey." A deep breath in the receiver crackled across the line. "Hey. I heard you went back home." He didn't, his apartment wasn't his home, but he didn't say that. "How are you?" Duo asked. "I can't sleep." There was a soft laugh. "I figured." "I'm sorry. It's late, I shouldn't have called. You were probably asleep." "I was," Duo admitted, "but I'm glad you woke me." "I ran out of sleeping pills and they won't give me any more. They say I can't rely on them forever; that it's not healthy." Duo didn't say anything. "I can't sleep if I'm not tired." "Do you want me to tell you something boring?" Heero smiled at the familiar offer. He wasn't sure if Duo's deep voice would be enough to lull him to sleep without going for his nightly run first, but it was worth a try and he didn't want to hang up yet anyway, even though neither of them could say all the things that needed to be said. "Yes. Please," he breathed. "Okay, hold on a second." There was a rustle on the other side of the line; Duo was moving around. Apparently, he went to grab something to draw inspiration from, his tablet most likely, as he started: "So, there's this actress on L4 that got married last weekend…" Duo told him the meaningless details of the ostentatious ceremony and the movies she had been in, none of which either of them had ever seen. Heero closed his eyes and listened to the constant rumble of Duo's voice. It wasn't the same as listening to him talk while they were in bed together and he could feel Duo's every breath and the vibration of his voice in his chest, but it still had a calming effect on him. Duo effortlessly blended one story into the next as he was probably working his way through some gossip blog, knowing that the woes of celebrities didn't intrigue Heero in the least. None of the names were even familiar to him. They were just regular people to him; people Heero didn't care about. He couldn't fathom why the general public cared about who they dated, what they wore, what their fitness routines were like and how they preferred their coffee. All Heero cared about was Duo's voice; constant and deep. It was an ocean he was sinking into. He didn't even really hear the words anymore, instead the voice faded to an indiscriminate hum. When he woke up, the wall outside his apartment was glowing pink and orange again. The phone was in his lap and he could faintly hear the beeping of the dial tone. He had only slept for a few hours – less than four – but it was remarkable that he had slept at all. Logically, it was pure exhaustion from not having slept in over 48 hours that finally did the trick, but he couldn't shake the idea that the comforting effects of Duo's voice had something to do with it. He wondered how long the man had kept talking to him until he had realized he had fallen asleep. Heero tried to pinpoint the moment he had sunken into a dreamless state of unconsciousness, but he couldn't remember. He went through his day as usual; cursing a lot because even the most simple, daily chores were not becoming any less of a hassle from his seated position. At night, he called Duo again. The phone rang thirty times before Heero recognized that it was going to go unanswered and he hung up. He spent the rest of the night rubbing the big toe on his left foot, as it ached insufferably. He felt silly for calling Duo, more-so since the call had gone unanswered. He didn't want to need anyone, but he did need Duo. It was embarrassing having to admit that to himself – he would never admit it to anyone else, not even to Duo. The next night he tried again and once more Duo didn't pick up the phone. In spite of that, he did manage to scrape together a few hours of sleep as he nodded off a couple of times during the night and the following day. Pure exhaustion simply caused him to black out and he didn't wake up feeling anymore rested and that pressure of energy inside him was still building. His physical therapy wasn't scheduled to start for another week – since he was supposed to still be in the hospital room after all, letting nurses fret over his recovery. Although, he wasn't sure how useful physical therapy was going to be as long as his legs weren't responding to the signals sent by the implant in his brain. He was bored. He didn't have a television, unlike at the house, and none of his books and other reading material were at the apartment either. His mind was trapped in an uncooperative body, with no outlet available to him. He started thinking about the mission again. He had gone over every detail countless of times while confined to his bed. Being grounded, he still hadn't been allowed access to the mission report and his memory was still patchy and disjointed. The snippets of memories were impossible to piece together; the edges were too blurry for the puzzle pieces to fit. He wanted Duo to tell him what happened exactly, but Duo refused to explain the sequence of events, thinking he was protecting Heero somehow by keeping him in the dark. The man mistakenly thought that Heero didn't know that he was the one to cut off his legs, but while Heero didn't remember the act, he knew it was the only logical explanation. The Japanese pilot leaned forward and grabbed the ankle of his left leg, to hoist it up over his right knee, bringing the throbbing toe in his reach. He massaged the stiff, unyielding foot absent-mindedly. While he could feel the pain, he couldn't feel his own touch and somehow that helped subdue the pain; like his brain was forced to accept that the sensations in his lower extremities weren't real by experiencing that his own touch didn't register in the nervous system. That morning, he watched the lights come on, slowly brightening overhead. He squinted his eyes, which were irritated and watery from lack of rest. He kept pinching his thumb and forefinger around his big toe on his left foot, while the toe on his right foot was starting to hurt more and more. Rather than acknowledge that the pain wasn't real, his brain just displaced it to the other foot. He started wiggling his toes, to scratch them against the rough plastic of the footrest, then he froze. Did he really just wiggle his toes, or did he only think he was wiggling his toes, while in fact nothing was happening? He leaned forward, folding himself over his left leg which lay bent in his lap. He glared down at his right foot, which was prettier than it used to be – an odd thing to notice. After a moment of apprehension, he wiggled the toes again. They moved. His eyes widened and he kept doing it. He couldn't really 'wiggle' his toes, since there was no toe-separation or articulation in the foot, but the block of five toes moved up and down in accordance with his brain's commands. Overconfident, he tried moving the toes on the left foot, but they wouldn't budge and the disappointment dulled the small victory, but he focused on his right foot instead. The toe still hurt, but at least it was moving.
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